Pakistan has produced a number of brilliant cricketers with outstanding playing skills.
But none has been as hard to pin down, elusive and (to his captains), as frustratingly talented as Wasim Raja (elder brother of former Pakistan cricket captain and popular commentator, Ramiz Raja).
Just before the 1987 Cricket World Cup when the then Pakistan cricket captain, Imran Khan, was holding a large (and televised) function to raise funds for his cancer hospital, the Pakistan team joined him on the stage.
The host of the event (late Moin Akhtar) went about with a microphone talking to various players. When he reached Imran, he asked him who he thought was the most talented player he’s ever played with.
Imran smiled and while pointing at Ramiz Raja said: ‘His brother, Wasim Raja. He was hugely talented, but very erratic.’
Even in his book, ‘An All Round View’ (1994), Khan writes that Wasim never did justice to his stunning talent.
Coming from a highly educated family of Lahore, Raja made his Test debut in 1973, selected for his prodigious cricketing talents.
But throughout his career he remained to be a rebel and a loner. He continued to have a problematic relationship with almost all of his captains and the Pakistan cricket board.
Perhaps the only captain that was able to nurture his talent the most was Mushtaq Muhammad under whom Raja played his finest cricket.
In an essay written by West Indian batsman and former captain, Rohan Kanahi, after his team’s 1975 tour of Pakistan, Kanahi was highly impressed by the swashbuckling batting talents of Raja.
But Kanhai was once surprised to see Raja sitting alone at the bar during a party in Karachi: ‘He was not very easy to talk to,’ Kanhai wrote. ‘He was very private and detached from the rest of the team.’
But the crowds loved him. During the second Test against the visiting Windies in Karachi (in 1975), while fielding near the boundary line, Raja baited a section of the large crowd at the National Stadium by teasingly threatening to unzip his fly! Outraged, the conservative Urdu press accused him of being drunk on the field. Raja, however, went on to crack a superb century in the match.
Pushed in and out of the team for his cavalier approach, Raja was not played in the 1976 series against New Zealand that Pakistan won 2-0 (under Mushtaq).
His name was missing again from the 18-member squad that was announced for Pakistan’s long tour of Australia and the West Indies. Both teams at the time were considered to be the best in the world.
However, on the insistence of captain, Mushtaq Muhammad, and manager, Omar Kureshi, Raja was finally given a berth in the touring squad.
In spite of performing well in the side games, Raja could not find a place in the playing eleven in the 3-Test series against Australia (that Pakistan drew 1-1).
Raja had scored a scorching century against a tough Queensland side, but when the night before the third Test he was told by the team manager (Col. Sujja) that he will not be picked for the Test, Raja went on a rampage.
Always a reckless drinker but painfully introverted, Raja decided to express his rage by smashing all the mirrors in his hotel room (with a whiskey bottle). He then stumbled into the hotel lobby, slurring abuses against Sujja.
In his autobiography, Mushtaq Muhammad relates how some players, who were having a drink at the hotel bar, panicked and approached Mushtaq, and it was left to the captain to cool Raja down. Mushtaq also suggests that Sujja actually wanted Raja in the playing eleven, but it was Mushtaq who decided to play Haroon Rashid instead.
The management decided to send Raja back to Pakistan, but Mushtaq vetoed the decision.
Raja finally got his chance in the West Indies leg of the tour, on faster wickets and against faster bowlers. In a closely contested 5-Test series (that the Windies won 2-1), Raja compiled over 500 runs, cracking one century and five fifties (and hitting 14 sixes – a record at the time of a batsman hitting the most sixes in a series).
A Pakistani player fondly remembered how Raja (during the fourth Test) sat in the dressing room in his shorts, then casually walked out to smoke ganja with some West Indian fans, came back, padded up, went in and hit the fearsome fast bowler, Joel Garner, for a first ball six over long-off!
In his book, Mushtaq writes that he continued to tolerate Raja’s ‘many eccentricities’ because he was performing brilliantly.
